An extremist, not a fanatic

April 02, 2012

False consciousness

Norm criticizes Eliane Glaser’s discussion of false consciousness. I’m not happy with either side of the argument.

Norm says false consciousness has acquired a bad name because of the way it has been used politically in defence of authoritarian politics. This is true, but irrelevant. We should judge ideas by their empirical validity, not by their consequences. People either have false consciousness or not, whether you like it or not.

But I’m not happy with Ms Glaser’s view either. She says:

Members of the upper echelons of our society act against their interests too. Lots of doctors drink too much, and bankers spend their cash on tat.

This threatens to reduce the idea of false consciousness to a mere matter of taste. One person’s “tat” is another’s art. It surely is not helpful to ascribe false consciousness to anyone who lacks our fine aesthetic judgments.

My bigger gripe, though, is that Ms Glaser seems to equate false consciousness with being “hoodwinked and manipulated by political and corporate elites.” This, though, is not the only way in which people acquire “false” beliefs. The can arise from systematic cognitive biases. Here, for example, are four ways in which such biases might generate a mindset excessively supportive of capitalist inequalities:

1. The status quo bias leads people to prefer existing evils; there’s a reason why “better the devil you know” is an old saying.

3. The just world illusion leads people to look for, and find, justifications for injustice.

4. A mix of the halo effect and outcome bias causes people to under-rate the role of luck and over-rate the role of agency when thinking about successful people. This leads to excessive deference towards rich businessmen.

But does all this amount to false consciousness? Not necessarily, for two reasons.

First, to know what false consciousness is, we must know what true consciousness is. And this we do not know. It is, of course, another cognitive bias (overconfidence) to think that true consciousness is what we happen to believe.

Secondly, just because beliefs are irrational does not suffice to show that they are wrong. It might be - given that a viable alternative to capitalism is not (yet) on the table - that people are right to support capitalism, even if they do so for the wrong reasons.

There is, though, a paradox in all this. On the one hand, research into cognitive biases has been fashionable in recent years. And yet on the other, as Eliane says, “false consciousness has disappeared from political debate.” Do the above reasons suffice to explain this paradox, or is something else going on?

I've long thought false consciousness perhaps the best example of a dangerous idea that nonetheless has some truth in it.

It too easily allows a person, or, far more dangerously, an entire political movement, to disregard contrary opinion as mere delusion. You disagree with me? Your opinion doesn't count because its based on false consciousness.

I think its been discredited by the many people who have thrown it around as an accusation rather than accept that well informed people might honestly disagree with them. (If you want an classic example, have a look at the warring factions of feminism on pornography).

Patrick - I completely agree. In fact, I'd go further - I have only ever seen it used in the way you describe. I have never seen it used in the way Mr Dillow describes. I suppose it may have been in Marxist academic literature but to normal people leading normal lives, it is just a totally transparent trick to avoid having to deal with the fact that no one agrees with you outside your activist circle.